Clients

When projects go wrong, designers tend to blame their clients. But its usually designers who are to blame. Yes, there are bad clients, but they are often turned into bad clients by designers treating them badly. Designers get the clients they deserve - the good, the bad and the indifferent.

The only way to build these great designer-client relationships is to create them ourselves. We cant rely on our clients to do it. The onus is on us to make these equal partnerships happen. But how do we do this? In a word: empathy. Empathy is a great attribute for a designer: it provides understanding and objectivity.

And just when we think we've learnt how to deal with clients, we find one who doesn't fit our game plan. In truth, all we ever learn to do is handle a particular client. When another comes along, we have to start all over again. Clients can be capricious. They can be fickle and indecisive. This is a hard thing to contend with. But no one ever escapes it.

Doing all the dull stuff like written quotes, establishing payment terms and agreeing schedules is essential. Even when clients are casual and relaxed it is vital to maintain professional standards. When we complain that clients don't treat us like 'professionals' it is usually because we haven't behaved professionally.

Graphic Design: A User's Manual by Adrian Shaughnessy

Job Bags

Job-bag is a secure, intelligent resource solution for sharing media and marketing assets across all platforms anywhere in the world, twenty-four hours a day. Job-Bag empowers all members of management, sales, marketing and production without causing the usual bottle necks of busy design houses, marketing outlets and media ventures. No longer do you need to rummage through though traditional job bags in order to find copy, images, spreadsheets, word docs etc. Now all you need is a username and a login.

In Plain English...
Click a link from your website or intranet, and have full access to all your media assets, with the ability to upload/download and share files at the click of a mouse.

Job-bag is taking the grunt work out of what is killing business hours. What’s more it is a simple web browser interface not hidden by any computer mumbo jumbo.

Job-Bag’s foundation is an innate understanding of the needs of deadline-driven businesses where every minute counts, automated media asset repurposing gives publishers, advertising and marketing agencies, photographers and in-house marketing departments a true cost saving creative and competitive edge.

Job-Bag’s evolved by working with clients and understanding the need for a cost and time saving effective solution that not only reduces time, errors and servicing of assets, but also opens doorways to new revenue streams.

http://www.job-bag.co.uk/what.htm

Briefs

How a designer responds to a brief is the most important factor in determining the outcome of a project. Briefing documents need to be studied closely, yet following them slavishly is not always advisable. We should challenge bad briefs and dig deeper into good ones.

Although designers like to kick out at the restrictions in design briefs, the simple truth is that they need briefs like cars need fuel. yet a frequent complaint among clients is that designers ignore briefs. There are two reasons why clients say this. The first is that some designers do indeed ignore briefs and do what they want to do. The other - probably the more common - the reason is that most designers give clients better work than they want, and clients mistakenly see this as a failure to follow the brief.

Although a brief normally arrives as a document, its more important aspect is the person, or persons, who issued it. In other words, a brief isn't just a brief, its a piece of communication from a human being with thought, prejudices, fears and concerns, and its only by dealing with the human being 0 the brief's creator - that we can squeeze out its real essence. A good written brief is a prompt for a discussion more than a set of definitive instructions.

The AIGA defines a design brief as follows:

'A written explanation given by the client to the designer at the outset of a project. As the client, you are spelling out your objectives and expectations and defining a scope of work when you issue one. You're also committing to a concrete expression that can be revisited as a project moves forward. Its an honest way to keep everyone honest. If the brief raises questions, all the better. Questions early are better than questions late.'

Graphic Design: A User's Manual by Adrian Shaughnessy

Account Handlers

Many design groups use account handlers. Some account handlers do a good job, but in most cases account handling leads to clients being divorced from the creative process and imagining that design is an invisible procedure. When this happens, problems ensue.

Forcing clients to deal with account handlers downgrades the creative process and turns it into a mess of indecision and rejection. There's nothing easier for a client than rejecting or brainlessly modifying work when someone with no personal stake in the project is charged with presenting it. It's much harder to tell a designer, or someone intimately involved with the creative production of a piece of work, that their efforts are rejected. Of course, this is why clients prefer to deal with account handlers; they can be bullied.

Furthermore, account handlers in agencies and big design groups often develop a greater loyalty to their clients than to their own creative teams. This is hardly surprising. They are encouraged to bond with their clients - thats their job. But clients sense this, and they rip creative work to pieces.

In the modern design studio everyone does the 'account handling', and every phone call, email, or meeting is an opportunity to 'look after clients'. For solo designers, the same applies. They spend half their time being a designer and the other half being an account handler - not to mention accountant, debt chaser, production controller, spellchecker, light-bulb changer and a dozen other roles. To put it as bluntly as possible - all designers have to learn to become account handlers all the time.

Graphic Design: A User's Manual by Adrian Shaughnessy

Psychology

Adopting the correct frame of mind is vital. By frame of mind, i mean having the right attitude and managing your expectations. Don't assume you will walk into the first job you apply for (but don't assume you won't). Be positive, but expect setbacks - everyone has knock-backs at the outset of their careers, and how we deal with them determines how we develop as creative individuals and as human beings.

Don't be too lofty about where you should work. By all means be ambitious and aim high, but don't turn your nose up at opportunities that don't conform to your vision of the ideal job. Make it your mission to attend as many interviews as you can. Learn from each one. Find out what you are doing well and what you are doing badly. Ask the interviewers to tell you. Most of them will do this happily.

Finally, as a recent graduate you have an attribute that a designer with two years experience doesn't have: you cost less. Also, you will be willing to do many of the mundane things that someone with two years experience is less willing to do. So don't see yourself as disadvantaged. See yourself as possessing the precious quality most employers want: unrestrained enthusiasm and willingness.

Graphic Design: A User's Manual by Adrian Shaughnessy

Presentation

When a designer's ideas are rejected it's usually because they have been presented badly, and not because they are bad ideas. Few skills are more important to the modern designer than the ability to present work. Considering the importance of presentations it's surprising we're not better at doing them.

Designers frequently imagine that presenting work is a trick- like walking on a high wire - which only certain people are able to do. It's seen as something alien, a skill not suited to introspective graphic designers. It's certainly true that it can be effective to introduce a level on theatricality and performance into presentations. But its not necessary. Presentation is a matter of simple logic and common sense, and is one of the most fundamental skills a designer needs to acquire.

The way you present your work and yourself is more important than the work you show. No matter how good it is, if you present it sloppily, or present yourself sloppily, you will struggle to find employment. But if you do it well, the seemingly insurmountable mountain of landing a first job becomes a stroll on the beach.

To sum up: Make your presentation as good as you can. Be prepared to change it after two or three interviews if it's not getting a good response. And adopt a confident but unprejudiced view about any opportunities that present themselves.

Graphic Design: A User's Manual by Adrian Shaughnessy

Grids

When detractors attack graphic design - Swiss design in particular - they point out that visual expression based on mathematical grids must be dull and inexpressive. In fact, the opposite is true. Grids means freedom. And what's more, artists have always known this.

Josef Muller-Brockmann wrote: 'The reduction of the number of visual elements used and their incorporation in a grid system creates a sense of compact planning, intelligibility and clarity and suggests orderliness of design. This orderliness adds credibility to the information and induces confidence. The grid determines the constant dimensions of space. There is virtually no limit to the number of grid divisions. It may be said in general that every piece of work must be studied very carefully so as to arrive at the specific grid network corresponding to its requirements.'

A grid is fundamentally about spatial relationships. Every spatial relationship needs to be considered. Putting together the internal bracing of a layout is one of the great joys of design, and once all the relationships are in place - arrived at through examination of all the factors involved - we are free to take as many liberties with the grid as possible.

For many clients, grids have become templates. They are highly usable, idiot-proof systems that allow anyone to lay out text and images. The result is the death of the notion of the grid as a living breathing structure, and the establishment of the idea of the grid as a rigid structure that anything can be poured into.

Graphic Design: A User's Manual by Adrian Shaughnessy